Brave Deeds of Union Soldiers

The American Civil War produced countless acts of valor, but few as audacious as the story that opens this remarkable historical account. During Sherman's legendary March to the Sea, a small band of Union soldiers from the First Tennessee Regiment faced a swollen, impassable Chattahoochee River with all boats destroyed and Confederate sharpshooters waiting on the far bank. At three in the morning, under pouring rain, Colonel Brownlow ordered his men to strip naked and plunge into the roaring current. They swam through churning waters filled with boulders, emerged shoeless and weaponless in places, and charged through thorny forest to surprise and capture an entrenched enemy force together with their artillery. This is not a comprehensive military history but rather a collection of such moments, each a window into what ordinary men did when commanded to attempt the impossible. Scoville writes with early 20th-century reverence for these deeds, preserving stories of heroism that might otherwise have been lost to time, from famous commanders to the unnamed soldiers whose courage defined the Union cause.